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'Game Of Thrones' Season 3 Episode 5 Review: 'Kissed By Fire'

[Spoiler warning for both the HBO show and the books by George R. R. Martin.]

(I know I’ve just warned you about spoilers, but I’m doing it one more time for good measure. Okay?)

Game of Thrones has found its stride in Season 3. Seasons one and two were both good, but the third has been some of the best television I’ve ever watched. I’m riveted by nearly every scene, and Sunday night’s episode is no exception.

‘Kissed by Fire’ is an episode filled with flame and heat — from the red of Ygritte’s hair to their first kiss (“You know nothing Jon Snow,” she tells him before realizing he may know a thing or two); from the fiery blade of Beric Dondarrion, to the prayers of Lady Selyse, Lord Stannis Baratheon’s zealous wife; from the steaming cave pools north of the wall, to the bath houses of Harrenhal. Fire everywhere, in hearts and stone and steel.

It was wildfire that stole the show, however. Jaime’s delirious soliloquy as he bathed with Brienne of Tarth was one of the strongest moments in the show so far. His revelation to Brienne that the Mad King had stored wildfire throughout King’s Landing and had planned to burn that city and all its inhabitants rather than surrender to Tywin and Robert casts his part in Aerys’s death in a whole new light.

“Help, the Kingslayer!” Brienne calls as he begins to swoon.

“Jaime,” he replies. “My name is Jaime.”

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has played pretty much the perfect Jaime so far, but tonight he took the role to a new level entirely. He’s managed the suave, witty, irreverent knight exceedingly well, and he looks the part. Tonight’s episode showed not only a deeper side of the character, but just how powerful Coster-Waldau’s performance in Game of Thrones really is. I think I held my breath through half the story.

The episode began with a fight to the death between Brotherhood Without Banners chieftain Beric Dondarrion and Sandor “The Hound” Clegane.

I feel a little bad for Sandor, whose monster of a brother burned him as a child leaving him deathly afraid of fire. The next worst thing after a bay of wildfire is a blade kissed by fire.

Thoros of Myr’s Lord of Light must have felt bad, too, because Sandor wins, slicing his blade clean through Dondarrion’s shoulder.

Of course, Thoros is a holy monk, a red priest, and in some ways I suspect he’s more a true priest to his God than the Red Lady, Melisandre. At least he doesn’t burn people alive, or make grand promises about Beric being the Chosen One.

Perhaps I say that simply because I actually like Thoros and have a strong dislike of Melisandre. The entire Brotherhood is a storyline I’d love to see lots more of, because it’s filled with characters I like in a show (and series of books) with far too few likable characters.

Then again, not only doe sThoros not burn people, he also raises people from the dead. He’s brought back Beric six times. Dondarrion jokes that he’s been killed more than once by a Clegane now. Arya doesn’t appear to be amused.

She asks Thoros if he can bring back someone who has had their head cut off.

“I don’t think it works that way, child,” the priest replies. Nothing ever quite works the way Arya wants it to.

In the north we have yet another brief scene with Jon Snow, whose storyline has taken something of a backseat as he traverses the frozen landscape of Hoth with the wildlings.

I joke, of course, but there is something Hoth-like about the snowy expanses north of the wall. I keep wanting them to mount their tauntauns and get this long trek over with. Even a steamy sex scene can’t alter the fact that nothing is going on with Jon’s story. Why not devote a bigger chunk of one episode to these tangled stories up north? Bran, Sam, and Jon all need a bit more screen time, and we need to see it all happen at once.

Don’t get me wrong, the politics south of the wall are great. We have Robb Stark proving he’s his father’s true-born son by sticking to his honor rather than listening to the advice of his counsel. In one very literal fell swoop he dispatches half his armies to the north. Loosing heads and losing heads are apparently skills linked quite closely by stubbornness and pride.

Ultimately, rather than listening to his wife, his mother, or his uncle, Robb comes upon his own brilliant plan: to take Casterly Rock, home of the Lannisters. And to do that, he’ll need to go crawling back on hands and knees to Lord Frey whose daughter, he reminds us, he’d promised to marry. Which reminds me: perhaps he’s not quite Ned Stark’s son after all. Eddard would never have turned his back on such a promise, and certainly not for love.

The things we do for love….

Further south we have Tywin plotting against the Tyrells, maneuvering Sansa Stark into the reluctant arms of Tyrion “The Imp” Lannister, and Cersei into the even more reluctant arms of Loras Tyrell, who Littlefinger is spying on. (On a side note, the spying-on scene leads to quite possibly the twentieth bare buttocks we see this episode, which seemed determined to moon audiences at every opportunity.)

Tywin’s plotting is a great example of the King’s Hand letting his ruthlessness get the better of his judgment. Giving up Sansa to the Tyrells could have been a reasonable way to extricate himself from both her and the north rather than somehow thinking that he could seat a Lannister in Winterfell and get away with it. The Tyrells could have worked their magic on the northerners, no doubt, in ways poor Tyrion would never be able to do.

Meanwhile, Tywin surely could have secured a better alliance than he would by doubling down on Highgarden. Isn’t marrying Joffrey to Margaery enough? Can the ties that bind really wind any tighter?

One imagines an alliance with Dorne, for instance, would have been better. And Tywin could use it as an excuse to send Cersei away—south to Dorne, where Tyrion has already sent her daughter, Myrcella.

The scene between the Queen of Thorns and Tyrion was yet another lovely illustration of the Tyrell’s rather more skilled approach to managing the public than their Lannister counterparts, and a nice juxtaposition to the Lannister family gathering. It’s nice to see the chess pieces move, and not just the blades fly.

But forget King’s Landing. Things will get more interesting there soon enough.

Let’s fly south—south, but mostly east, past the Free Cities to Slaver’s Bay, where Daenerys Targaryen is trying still to make free men of the Unsullied. She is Khaleesi now of a horseless army of unmanned men whose brutal training has left them only part human.

More interesting than her efforts are the squabbling of Jorah Mormont and Ser Barristan Selmy, who reminds Jorah that back in Westeros he’s a disgraced man—an exile, banned for his selling of slaves in a land where slavery is outlawed. Selmy doesn’t quite say as much, but he suggests that perhaps Jorah’s days as Dany’s right-hand-man are limited.

Unsurprisingly, Jorah seems to disagree.

I’m still wondering where this all goes given the very different way the show has handled the matter.

Wherever it goes, I’ll be watching. I’m firmly under the show’s spell at this point, whether in the icy north or the dusty sun of Slaver’s Bay. HBO has brought life many of the characters from the books who felt too flat, and have stayed true to the characters who were already fleshed out in the books. I do think the north is suffering a bit from neglect at this point, and has been for some time, but I have faith that much of that will change either in the second half of this season, or in Season 4.

Either way, this is television not to be missed. It’s quickly becoming one of my top shows of all time, right up there with Breaking Bad as dramas nobody should have the misfortune of missing.

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Loved the episode. Each storyline is progressing nicely. I’m glad Jon Snow finally hooked up with that redhead! And that was quite a twist at the end; two wedding engagements! http://www.creativetales.net/

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Interesting review. Thanks. I have to double-check my books but – please correct me if I’m wrong – in the books, Tywin wants to wed Cersei to someone else to solidify an alliance, but is he ever specific as to who? I do know that he does not talk about Loras – for one thing, in the books, Loras is a member of the Kingsguard, and so has given up his right to wed. This is another way in which the show has departed from the books.

Also, in the books, Barristan is on the Small Council – he is the one voice on the Council to support Ned Stark when Stark objects to having Dany killed. He was not on the Council in the show, something that I had not noted, but which does leave an open question re: later events that transpire in the book and need to be duplicated in the show. I’ve wondered how the show will handle its departures from the book re: Selmy and now I’m more puzzled than ever.

I thought the episode was terrific, with one notable exception. I’ll get that out of the way first: I hate, hate, *hate* Jon and Ygritte. Hated them in the book. Hate them now. Really hate her stupid catchphrase. Granted, I’m well aware that lots of people (probably even a majority) like them, even really like them. But I thought that scene was excruciating. The only thing I liked is how comical I find it when any of the characters (first, Daenerys back in Season 1, and now Jon here) try anything “new” (I’m not going to go into detail, what with Forbes being a family Web site and all), and everyone there acts like someone just reinvented the wheel.

Moving on to the good stuff, which was the pretty much everything else in the episode. There were a lot of fantastic scenes in this episode, so I might as well start at the beginning. I actually expected the trial by combat (one of my favorite chapters in the entire series, right up there with Davos’ Blackwater chapter) to be the final scene of the episode, but I liked it at the top. It pretty much lived up to what I was expecting, as Beric’s fiery sword was really spectacular, and he had some pretty fancy moves to go with it

I also thought Arya’s scenes were all excellent, and this should be Maisie Williams’ Emmy submission episode (she really should have been nominated last year). I found the goodbye with Gendry to be particularly moving, with Arya’s “I can be your family” being one of the saddest lines of the episode (though, depending on what theories one subscribes to, possibly prescient). It’s obvious that she really cares for Gendry, and it’s sad to see Arya continue to have people she cares about taken away from her, especially when (in the case of her father), there’s no way to bring them back, not even in a world like Westeros where that is sometimes possible.

I love that the Queen of Thorns is continuing to get plenty of work, as she seems to get a scene with each of the major players in King’s Landing. This week, it was Tyrion, and it was excellent. She thoroughly demolished his arguments (and really, what could he say to them–she was right) before magnanimously offering to pay for half the cost of the wedding. Just expertly done all the way around. Here’s hoping for an Olenna/Tywin scene next week.

Speaking of Tywin, that final scene was also great. I respected Tyrion for objecting to yet another cruel act toward Sansa. And relegating Cersei to the same status (Queen Regent or not, she really doesn’t have a whole lot of power now that Tywin is running things) was fantastic. His contemptuous “my children” might have been the best line of the episode just due to the delivery.

You asked why he would marry Cersei to Loras. I couldn’t quite remember how that played out in the book, so I found the chapter where it’s discussed. It’s basically the same thing, and Kevan explains that it would smooth over any hurt feelings from the Lannisters swooping in and marrying Sansa to Tyrion. And I’m not sure marrying her off to Dorne makes any more sense than marrying her to Loras, since they already have a marriage alliance with Dorne involving Myrcella. Also, Tywin doesn’t want to offend the Tyrells (who really dislike the Martells) by offering Cersei to Dorne.

I’m all for Robb being resolute, but the show made it pretty clear that this was the wrong move. Robb is a good man, but he seems to have inherited both his father’s stubborn devotion to duty and his mother’s susceptibility to emotion (e.g. her releasing the Kingslayer to try to get her daughters back, him throwing away a strategic alliance with the Freys because he fell in love with Talisa). Not necessarily the best (in terms of self-preservation) traits to have for a leader in Westeros. At any rate, his new plan to attack Casterly Rock does seem to be the best remaining option. It will be interesting.

The scene between Jaime and Brienne was excellent, though I think the show might be trying a bit too hard to make a child defenestrater sympathetic. This whole “pleaded with the king to surrender peacefully” thing is a bit more noble than is consistent with his character. A powerful scene nonetheless, and it did a good job of fleshing out some of Westeros’ history. The rehabilitation of Jaime is one of the most fascinating subplots of the series, and it’s good to see that the show is following suit.

I continue to enjoy the Daenerys plot. I find what they’ve done with Jorah and Barristan to be pretty interesting. They’re swapping war stories and almost seem like friends. They’re pretty hostile toward each other in the books, but I think I like this better. For one thing, Jorah might be the biggest improvement of any character other than Margaery, so that’s an automatic upgrade.

But I wondered when his treachery would come up, and it was explained that the reason Barristan hasn’t said anything is that (unlike in the book, when he was on the Small Council), he just doesn’t know. I still think it has to come up at some point, but I’m enjoying this in the mean time. I also liked the Grey Worm scene quite a bit, as his “lucky name” explanation made sense to me.

Finally, I really liked the Dragonstone scenes this week. I liked that Stannis’ moral code caused him to confess to his wife, who not only didn’t care, but knew all about it. Stannis’ wife was interesting enough (though really creepy, what with the remains of her miscarriages in jars), but I really liked his daughter.

The poor girl has that skin condition, but she seems remarkably well adjusted otherwise. I loved that she decided to visit Davos because he is her friend, and having her be the one to teach him how to read is a really smart change from the book. The show has done such a great job with casting kids (a notoriously difficult task for casting directors), and this appears to be another winner.

I can’t share your Jon Snow / Ygritte hate. I *can* however agree that Jon is being made into a shallow, pretty-boy for the show. This is deeply annoying to me since I consider Jon to be the central figure of the entire series and I don’t think they’re doing much to flesh out his character.

And yes, they’ve done a remarkable job casting kids. I felt more connection to Shireen in this one episode than I ever did in the books. But where is her fool?

I too have been disappointed by the lack of integrity and substance attributed to Jon Snow in the series. It can make things in the future a lot less believable, depending on where his character is taken in the show as opposed to the books. I do enjoy being able to be surprised by evolutions of the plot in the series that are different than the books. This season has come afire as of yesterday and I’m excited for the rest of the season.

I am glad Patchface was absent as his “I know, I know,” drove me mad in the books. I much preferred Shireen’s haunting version of the song (though nothing can beat last week’s punk rendition of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”). Loved how Lady Selyse was portrayed as well. Great example of how religious zeal can override even the most fundamental of commitments.

I too am fairly disappointed with the portrayal of Jon Snow the show has offered so far (especially when you consider – depending on which theory you follow – the series may, in a sense, be named with him very much in mind). I feel that so far we have witnessed within the HBO series a less manly representation then given in the first few novels (in which he happens to be a younger model than the show’s version)…

How did the show’s explanation for Grey Worm make more sense to you than the book version? I really felt annoyed they left that part out its just a sentence and has so much stronger meaning than “yes this is my slave name that i killed babies with and my old master torchered me and made my life living hell each day…” While the book version they had to switch and swap names each day, so Grey Worm was the name he got the day Danny freed him… so thats why its his lucky name and proud of it…see the difference :/